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Phone Tapping in Greece

Unknowns tapped the mobile phones of about 100 Greek politicians and offices, including the U.S. embassy in Athens and the Greek prime minister.

Details are sketchy, but it seems that a piece of malicious code was discovered by Ericsson technicians in Vodafone's mobile phone software. The code tapped into the conference call system. It "conference called" phone calls to 14 prepaid mobile phones where the calls were recorded.

Some details are here. See also this news article, and -- if you can read Greek -- this one.

It always strikes me as strange that more phones & phone calls aren't encrypted. It seems like any business conversations (internally in a company or with partners or customers); and any government conversations; and heck, all personal calls too, since who knows when I'll say a credit card # on a phone line - should be encrypted.

Of course it would make difference. Usually the MSC is not interested in (content of) the voice traffic - it doesn't need to know what you and your friend are talking about in order to handle the call from your phone to your buddy's phone - meaning it doesn't have to decrypt it.

local newspapers report that vodafone removed the device before telling the government...so there is no case of ever finding who did it...that's a total lack of responsibility by Vodafone, they should have first informed the government and the secret services.

The people who went to the trouble of writing this software for Ericsson
systems would likely use it in other places. Will Ericsson technicians
investigate all their systems worldwide and inform the tapped customers?
Are their tapping disclosure laws in any jurisdiction? If the Boston
Globe has to inform me that my credit card number was exposed shouldn't
T-Mobile inform me if my conversations have been exposed. I know I have
given my CC number over the phone.

In any case this is great advertising for Cryptophone. I happy for public
reports of tapping since I assume it is going on. It was awareness of the
insecurity of the internet that made SSL a requirement. With more public
reports perhaps end to end encryption will become standard for business.
Businesses demanded it for email with products like Blackberry. Why is
everyone talking in the clear.

would encryption prohibit this case of wiretapping ? I am not really sure, because the "problem" was inside vodafone's network..the wiretapping was not done by some "vans" listening to the phone calls, these spies modified the way cell phones worked from the side of the network...

Encrypting the phone calls would have avoided this situation in that any valuable data or information on the lines would have been unavailable in a timely fashion to the people that were doing the tapping, it would not have stopped the tapping.

Encryption of voice and data use different techniques but the end result is the same, to stop prying eyes and ears from gaining access to priveleged information.

The cost to do end to end voice encryption is not insignificant and both parties have to have the same units, the same keys and the same protocols. Phones like STU 3s are not cheap and need to have regular key changes done one them, they also happen to be controled by the USA government. There is commercial versions available but again you have to have the crypto infrastructure in place to handle the calls and giving everyone of your friends a mutli thousand dollar phone is not an option for most people.

Encryption would not have mattered here. The code was conferencing another phone into the conversation, not just "listening in". It's as though the person called two people.

And as for the encryption, I know here in the US all carriers are required by law to have "listening" points where the conversation is unencrypted (supposedly only accessible by warrant). I know this because I had to insert this feature into a previously encrypted phone.

In the press conference was mentioned that the "spy" software, was writen by ericsson in order to be in place to do exactly what, hear what people say. The point is that it was installed and running while vodafone had not buy it (yet, because now according to the new laws the company has to have it, i think). I also heard that the Prime minister and the others do encrypted their communications, don't know since when though, as the whole story was known (to a very few people) since March 2005. Finally i want to point out that any means of encryption is useless when the one that is spying on you has control of the communication medium. Only private key encryption can be applied in this situation, and this means that the same key has to be to each end before the establishment of the circuit using an already secured channel.

Note that the US diplomat who wrote the public letter to Powell outlining how the Bush administration policy of "Preemptive War" would destroy our status around the world was from the US consulate in Athens. Maybe somebody got nervous about leaks from that neck of the woods...

> Encryption would not have mattered here. The code was conferencing
> another phone into the conversation, not just "listening in".
> It's as though the person called two people.

This depends entirely upon the method of encryption. If you're talking about two phones that have a shared hardware encryption key, just plugging another phone in or routing the signal to another endpoint isn't going to help you, they'll get the signal, but it's garbage.

If both phones are using PKI methodology and you jump in between and can capture the key exchange, you can man-in-the-middle both decrypt keys, I suppose.

As best as I can get from the (greek) articles and especially from the press conference (see http://www.minpress.gr/cgi-bin/hwebnews.exe?-A=18373&-V=mme_cyber&-w=&-P)
it doesn't have anything to do with conference calls. The software was a set of routines that allows "lawful interception" (that is monitoring of phone calls), written by Ericsson but not bought by Vodafone or used by them.

Supposedly neither company knew that software was on there til they found it during an audit after people started complaining about missing calls and text messages. Some people are saying that it had to be done with inside knowledge or even access to the source code to activate the monitoring once the software was installed at the switch. Who knows.

Another argument for making it technologically impossible for these *&^%$#s to bug us, because legal barriers aren't enough.

The story is still under investigation and some greek journalists revealed the suspicious suicide of a Vodafone techinician who had access to the system one day before they informed the government about the tapping. He was found hanged while his profile did not fit to a desperate person.http://news.ert.gr/en/newsDetails.asp?ID=14841

Phone calls _on the radio interface_ are almost always encrypted, and in 3G the feature is quite difficult to turn off. Indeed some phones may be configured not to work with it turned off (in theory at least). However this only applies between the phone and the base station (RNC in 3G).

Beyond that level, you are essentially in a normal telephone network. Calls can't be encrypted for two reasons a) backwards compatibility and b) phone tapping laws require access to be provided.

a) is obvious; if your fixed phone can't accept an encrypted call, then your mobile phone can't make one. Most phones in the world can't.

b) is a bit more interesting, but fundamentally all systems have to be designed with phone tapping built in for the authorities. More importantly, they want to be able to do this at their convenience. Even if you make a XeNaFon* to XeNaFon call, it is quite likely to be routed across the fixed network. At this point they want to be tappable. Any official encryption system would need a backdoor. This is enforced by blocking standardisation of systems which don't include full tapping equipment and by making the operator responsible for the cost of providing the tap (meaning systems need to be simple and cheap).

End to end encryption devices to exist across GSM data channels, compared to standard mobile phones, they are expensive and rare. Compared to normal government communications devices they are cheap and convenient. My question is why the greek Government weren't using such, even if they wish to use a standard GSM network?

Note on the conference issue: sometimes conference circuits are used as part of the standard "lawful interception" system. They provide multi directional data and gain control in a convenient package. It can be both true that they were "making a conference" and that "they were using standard LI software".

This is huge and strange and scary... but not because it was meant to remain secret!

The unknown agency, who planned and executed this, made sure that it was going to be detected quite soon - much sooner than it took the Greek government to make it public.
All indications point to the direction of a staged "espionage scandal" that was set up as a time bomb to explode in the faces of many big players simultaneously.

The method chosen to tap Greece's 100 high-profile cellphones, i.e. by hacking directly into the cellphone service provider's system (rather than capturing, diverting and decrypting the targeted cellphone signals "from the air"), ensured the earliest possible detection of this false-flag operation.

And the fact that the culprits didn't even bother to isolate their primary targets from the clutter of "normal" Vodafone mobile users in the vicinity of their "shadow cellphones" makes their ulterior (non-tapping) motives even more blatant. The unsuspecting clients would naturally complain about the random losses of SMS messages - as they did - even if Vodafone's own network security staff had somehow missed the bleeps from a sizeable bug in their system.

According to the latest information circulating in the Greek media, the malicious code that activated Vodafone's "lawful interception" module was a copy of the software used by all four local mobile operators during the Athens 2004 Olympics under the C4I Protocol of telecom surveillance. The Seven Sisters of the global intelligence community were put in charge of C4I to ensure security from terrorist threat by monitoring thousands of wired and wireless Greek phones during the Games without much ado.

C4I was officially de-commissioned after the Olympics while its customised "lawful interception" modules and software components with access keys to the local phone company systems where supposedly destroyed. But at least one of the seven "end users" chose to keep a "copy" and use it to pull a trick on naive fellow signatories of the C4I Protocol, reminding them that total surrender to the Cryptocracy comes with no expiry date.

Regarding interception of normal 3G phones over the air: As all these phones have a GSM fallback mode, the attacker simply jams the 3G frequencies and thus forces the phone into GSM mode for calls. Then he can use the normal man-in-the-middle or passive interception techniques.

Actually, end to end encryption that is not US-government-sanctioned (like the STU-type devices mentioned above) and that is interoperable between GSM, landline and satellite is available here: http://www.cryptophone.com
The source code is published for public review since 2003, the encryption is strong and contains no backdoors for anyone (and you can take a look yourself to verify that). A free win32 client is available for download, so you can use your notebook with a modem as a secure phone.

Talk to Greg Rose about end-to-end encryption. He sits on the standards committees for cellular encryption systems (for Qualcomm). It's totally technically possible for the handsets that end users buy to be able to make calls that are encrypted end-to-end, just like the PC's we buy can make end-to-end HTTPS connections or SSH connections or VOIP calls. I've asked Greg about why the standards committees won't write a standard for end-to-end encryption (which would allow any company's phones to call any other company's phones, encrypted in a way that the cellular carrier can't wiretap). He says he brings it up, but the cellular phone companies all say that even though it would be totally legal for them to do it, they KNOW that the governments would disapprove and would do something nasty to them if they ever did it. (It's legal because the cellular provider is not providing the encryption service; they just provide a data channel that goes end-to-end. The citizen would buy their end-to-end-encrypting GSM phone from any phone vendor, without regard to which carrier's network it will be used on.) So it falls to small companies to build niche-market cryptophones -- because they have the balls to serve their customers rather than the perverted and corrupt practices of governments.

> My question is why the greek Government weren't using such, even
> if they wish to use a standard GSM network?

Actually, they were. TTBOMK, these phones were not official phones, used for inter-goverment communications (such as the PM talking to a minister) but rather un-official ones, used for personal comm --like the PM talking to his wife:

> Note that the US diplomat who wrote the public letter to Powell outlining how
> the Bush administration policy of "Preemptive War" would destroy our status
> around the world was from the US consulate in Athens. Maybe somebody got
> nervous about leaks from that neck of the woods...

Anti-americanism has quite a history in Greece dating back to the military junta (1967-1974) when the US helped, instead of stopping, the coup from happening (in H. Kissinger's own words, "[the US] were afraid of communists taking over Greece"). In the 90s it started to decline, and right now most of the anti-US movement is quiet.

Anyway, anti-US or not, the whole idea of "Preemptive Wars" is appalling to most of the world, even if the US goverment doesn't seem to understand why.

which a) includes c-code for a supposed implementation b) notes that it's very weak c) notes that it's designed by the French (in the days before they realised they were being spied on by the Americans :-)

> Note that the US diplomat who wrote the public letter to Powell outlining how
> the Bush administration policy of "Preemptive War" would destroy our status
> around the world was from the US consulate in Athens. Maybe somebody got
> nervous about leaks from that neck of the woods...

Although anti-Americanism exists in Greece and Europe (for the wrong reasons I must add) this doesn’t seem to be the work of US intelligence but rather some group who has access to people who work in the Telecom company.

This is a classic example of employees misusing and abusing their power and abilities. If the Greek government is willing to discover who did this, there are ways to connect the dots.

On the other hand Vodafone's reaction of "destroying" the software raises more questions than answers. They should have their license taken away for destroying evidence and as accomplices in espionage.

Encrypted phone communications? You're talking Greece here remember. Only 20% of the population have ever used a computer.
Now i m pissed!What do you think of us people?That we re living in caves and we re wearing kidskins instead of clothes? And you re saying what?That in the US u use encryption?lol You re being tapped people 24/24, you re always being watched and they re lying to u about it! And btw cyprus' occupation by the turks in 1974 happened with US involvment.

20% of the population having used a computer is actually quite high for any country (the US is around 15% acording to some studies). Don't confuse house holds or other measures used to make it sound better (ie 15% of the population or 25% of households).

As regards the invasion of Northan Cyprus, study your history a bit better, the US basically sat on their thumbs. A number of organisations put out a "conspiracy theory" that Kissinger helped the Turks. An example is,

Briefly, The Cypriot government of the time under the Archbishop Makarios had allowed a malitia (Cypriot National Guard) to be formed that was staffed by Greek army personnel from the Greek Millitry Dictatorship (Junta)who's sole intent was to stir up trouble in the name of Enios.

After several atrocities against Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish army Invaded Cyprus (July 74) and stopped when they had occupied an area of land proportianate to the percentage of the population that where Turkish in origin. Cyprus is still partitioned at the point the Turkish army stopped (Green Line).

Shortly after the invasion the Greek Military Junta colapsed and democracy (in theory) took over in Greece.

@ALL
Can we keep politics off of these blog pages unless it's directly relevant to the topic, it's generally very very yawn worthy at the best of times.

@Kate
how dumb can u be girl ?
"You're talking Greece here remember." have u ever been in Greece? do u even know where greece is?
Just some background info for u.
The Spy Software was not from Ericsson alone, but from a Company called Comvesre, who had a partnership with Ericsson. Does this name ring a bell girl? yeah a few years ago the US had some problems with this company as well, as far as i can remember something about spying on cellphones, was it ? its a israely company who has deals with a lot of coverment agencies like NSA and other National Security related shitty agencies (yeah right) with the cover of bringing more quality products to the consumer (thats their cover).
Do your research girl, and you will find a lot over the net.

and by the way 20% for Greece is a huge use of Computers, but 15% for US ist quiet less, dont you think ??

It is really a pity some people can not talk but would rather yell at each other.

AFAIK there is no evidence regarding Comverse participation on this issue. That Comverse has a history in wiretapping is a different story. For sure vodaphone has a lot of difficult questions to answer, regarding their rational behind the virus removal.

Anti-americanism in Greece is a common myth. Greeks do not dislike Americans, though most do not agree with the US foreign policy on Iraq and elsewhere. I guess this is a global case, that needs not any further discussion here.

Regarding Cyprus, it is known that during the seventies the country was run by archibishop Makarios, a legally elected president who was supported even from the left. Makarios was never popular at the US, and Kissinger frequently refered to him as the "Castro" of the Mediterranean. If the then US administration had something to do with his removal is something that has not been documented so far. However it is understood that the US would have been happy if he was gone.

Given in mind that the coup against him was instrumented by colonel Ioannides, the strong man behind the then junta in Athens, a known anti-communist and pro-US figure, most analysts believe that Ioannides got at least the US tolerance if not their full support, on this. For the record he has spend the past thirty years behind bars.

AFAIK no attrocities had been conducted against the Turkish-Cypriot population during the coup, to put it simply the Greeks were busy with themselves at the time. Nicos Samson -the man who appointed by the junta succeded Makarios- made it clear from the first moment that bi-communal negotiations would continue as usual. The plain truth is that attrocities did happen by both sides after the Turkish invation. Mass graves are still found in the island even today. In some cases victims are identified through their DNA fingerprints, and given proper burials. A number of Greek-Cypriots prisoners are believed to be trasported to Turkey as hostages. Their exact wereabouts are not known so far.

Turkey long wanted to invade the island; they had attempted that back in '63 without much success. By '74 they were better prepared though.

This is the Greek version of the events, by someone who lived and can tell.

Some facts :-)
The software was activated in at least 3 Telecom Center's in the Attica region.

The software is PART of the exchange center of not only Ericsson but to all Vendors, it is a requirement in many countries and it is activated ONLY in those countries.

GSM Security is a joke; it never was supposed to deter eavesdropping from "lawful" agencies. It wouldn’t matter anyway in this case, since the software used, didn’t have the need to de-crypt anything it was just routing the traffic to another GSM phone.

Greek officials use military strength encryption to communicate; those are certified by the vendors either in USA, UK or Israel. The phones that were taped are only for personal use, that doesn’t mean that state secret’s wasn’t transmitted through them.

There is much debate in Greece about the way the eavesdroppers found the phone number’s they should tap. I really cant understand the reason, since if it really was a foreign power, then the standard procedure of “Network Creation��? used in RF taps would suffice, if it wasn’t then it’s an insider’s job.

btw I didn’t know we were anti-American here in Greece, but we surely do not agree with you on many foreign policy matters as the “old man��? states.

Not facts necessarily

Although Comverse produces software and hardware for wiretaps I am quite sure that Ericsson can handle its own software, what probably was purchased is their very elegant data mining suite of software.

I just came across Bruce's site. I am a fan of Bruce and a buyer of his books. I must admit I quite like the site. The news you can read are pretty unique and important. A couple of relevant words about myself: I am Greek (I was looking about the phone tapping scandal in Google when I discovered this). I am an electronics engineer. I served in the Greek Air Force special operations. I worked a long time in a major Greek bank with computer security responsibilities.
First point: so Greece buys cryptography from Israel too!?This probably explains some Greek-Israeli spats. But it also hints at close Greek-Israeli ties. Greece officially is very pro-Palastinian. Hmmmm!Does George Pantazis know how long this has been going on?
Phone tapping: It is not a serious spy agency. To use the Vodafone system in the way described in the newspapers runs the risk of being discovered by mistake and be tracked by the use of the recording phones as somebody must pick up the final recordings. Not to mention that it is easy to create false recordings from inside the Vodafone ssytem and pass misinformation, a well known trick in intelligence.A serious outfit would have used one of those suitcases that go near the antenna. You use reliable people (your own) with no fear of outside interference. The cost seems to be about $400000 per suitcase, a good investment for tapping a Prime minister.
It was, in all probability, privateering. The suspects are many:from the boss of Vodafone Greece to everybody with access. My suspicion is that the software was activated during the Olympics and it then the situation spiraled out of control with political phone conversations on sale(it has happened before in Greece).Going public was the only way to avoid a humilating mess.I suspect the persistent implications of the CIA are a deliberate plant to throw the public. Greeks will believe anything about the US. This creates the suspicion that the bosses of the newspapers that were implicating the CIA are a bit suspect.
The above should be seen under the light of how Greece operates. Greece is an honour society and your personal friends are above the organization. Somebody can easily imagine this software being activated barely legally, under verbal orders, to satisfy the Olympic Committee and then somebody abusing the system for personal gain. I will not be surprised if more "shadow phones" in different loactions turn up.

I just noticed this thread, so I am rather late with my response. Sorry!

@Clive Robinson
You said...
"Can we keep politics off of these blog pages unless it's directly relevant to the topic, it's generally very very yawn worthy at the best of times."

But continued the thread before that statement with...
"After several atrocities against Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish army Invaded Cyprus (July 74) and stopped when they had occupied an area of land proportianate to the percentage of the population that where Turkish in origin. Cyprus is still partitioned at the point the Turkish army stopped (Green Line)."

You give here a false impression and wrong facts; turkish population was 19%, occupied area 37%. Only after the occupation the turkish gouvernment sent more people from Turkey to Cyprus to settle there.

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Thanks for all the inputs; I read them all and now beleive that there could be encrytion involved but here the wiretapping was involved directly from the ericssons software. Is there by any means to detect such wiretapping?Would designing any secure protocol only to be used by the government officials work?Please suggest any security policy here and any way to detect call routing